Ken Levine says Steam Machine shows we’re hitting ‘diminishing returns’ with bleeding-edge graphics tech—just look at BioShock to see why art is more important

These days, I’m firmly on the System Shock side of the System Shock/BioShock division that exists almost exclusively in my head, but I’ll give Rapture this: it was goddamn stunning when I first took that bathysphere jaunt back in 2007. The barnacled art deco was a heck of a look, and it still is today. I can vouch for that: I replayed BioShock 1 and 2 just a couple years ago on my trusty Steam Deck.

In a recent chat with IGN, Irrational Games vozhd and ‘the narrative Legos guy’ Ken Levine said there’s a reason for that: he’s never been one to push hyper-real graphics tech to its limit. “I don’t think we’ve ever been a company that was like, ‘Oh my god, we need the latest and greatest technology,'” said Levine. “Outside of SWAT 4, we never really tried to do ultra-realism in our games.”

Part of that is because, well, cramming the latest whizzbang rendering stuff in your game is pricey, but there’s an artistic benefit too. “It doesn’t age as well as more stylistic things. BioShock still looks good, I think because it wasn’t trying to get every nut and bolt [looking] super realistic.” It was trying to get every nut and bolt looking wet and gross, which is an objectively superior approach so far as I’m concerned.

It sounds like, in Levine’s estimation, the endless chase of higher-fidelity graphics is a bit of a fool’s errand, at least for his own studio. “Look at, say, the Switch 2, and the new Steam Machine coming out. Those are not massive technological upgrades. That wasn’t their strategy. I think people are realising we’re hitting a bit of diminishing returns with that.”

What is the right approach? Great question. “I think if you have right art director, and the right approach, you don’t need to be on the cutting edge of technology all the time, and even the stuff we’re doing in Judas—all this narrative stuff we’re doing—it’s not CPU-intensive, it’s work-intensive on our side.”

I can’t argue with him too much. Ultimately, you probably do need someone out there riding the bleeding edge, as that’s how technology in general gets moved forward and developers like Levine and co get access to new tools they actually do want to use. But you certainly don’t need everyone trying to fit path tracing and DLSS 8 billion into their visual novel about a cool horse (or something).

Heck, the most visually arresting game I’ve played recently was Metaphor: ReFantazio, not because of the tech (which seems barely different from Persona 5’s), but because it feels like everyone was forbidden from saying no to the art team for the duration of that game’s development. If that doesn’t illustrate Levine’s point, I don’t know what does.

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